But how accurate is the 85% figure? Depending on the source, Zimbabwe’s unemployment rate has been estimated at as low as 4% and as high as 95%. In its 2013 election manifesto, President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party claimed unemployment levels stood at 60%.

Christopher Mweembe from NANGO said the organisation had taken the 95% estimate from the CIA World Factbook, an online database of country information and statistics published by the US Central Intelligence Agency. The website lists unemployment estimates of 80% (2005) and 95% (2009) for Zimbabwe, but does not provide references for the data. The site also cautions readers that: “[T]rue unemployment is unknown and, under current economic conditions, unknowable”.

5.4-million classified as ’employed’

A labour survey published in June 2011 by Zimbabwe’s agency for national statistics, Zimstat, put unemployment at 10.7%. This figure was based on an “expanded” definition of unemployment that included people who had given up looking for work. Figures based on a narrower “strict definition” of unemployment, which only counted people who were out of work but actively looking for a job, put unemployment at just 5.4%.

The 2011 survey provides the most recent official data on unemployment and was based on interviews conducted with Zimbabweans from 9,359 households. The Zimstat survey concluded that 6.1-million people aged 15 and older were “economically active”. (Zimbabwe’s population was estimated to be around 12-million at the time.)

As is the norm worldwide, the survey classified anyone who had worked for at least an hour – for cash or in kind – in the week preceding the survey as employed. As a result, around 5.4-million people fell into the “employed” category.

‘Unrealistically low unemployment rate’

A file picture of two Zimbabwean vendors in the streets of Harare. Photo: AFP/Alexander Joe

According to the survey, most of the 5.4-million Zimbabweans worked in the informal sector (84%), with only 11% (606,000) in formal employment. But only about a quarter of all those counted as employed received some form of financial compensation for their work.

“This is reflected in the Zimbabwe figures where agriculture [both formal and subsistence] contributes 66% of total employment, while in South Africa [which does not class subsistence farming as employment] it contributes 4.4%,” Buwembo said.

When the 2011 Zimstat labour survey was conducted it was still an internationally accepted survey practice that people who “worked for their own consumption” could be classed as employed. But this changed last year, when the international body of labour statisticians decided that work “for own final use” should not be counted as employment.

The high informal sector component adds to the “gross underestimate” of unemployment. Tina Koziol, an economist from the South African consultant group Econometrix, explained that it is difficult for researchers to accurately measure informal employment.

“Peoples’ responses in the employment survey are subject to perceptions. There is likely to be a lack of common understanding and interpretation in respect to the type of work engaged.

“In formal employment structures, with formal job registration data, labour definitions and data entries are much more strict. This gives a more accessible and reliable data basis.

“Overall, the conclusion remains that there is an absence of reliable data on Zimbabwe’s employment statistics.”

Conclusion: The data is unreliable

Very little primary data exists on unemployment in Zimbabwe. Claims that the unemployment rate is 60%, 85%, 95% or even as low as 4% – as stated by the World Bank – are not supported by reliable, current data.

The most recent labour survey conducted by the country’s agency for national statistics – which pegged unemployment at 10.7% – is three years old and has been criticised as a “gross underestimate” of the problem. The vast majority of the Zimbabweans it classified as “employed” were in fact eking out a living as subsistence farmers.

Neither the Zimstats estimate, nor the much higher unemployment estimates of 60% or 85% or 95%, can be considered reliable. Given the parlous state of Zimbabwe’s economy, unemployment levels are certainly extremely high. But to understand the scope of a problem and implement policies to help solve it you need to be able to quantify it.

The first step would be a regular survey of employment and unemployment levels in the country, conducted according to the latest accepted international practices. It is something that is urgently needed.

Comment on this report

Hundreds of thousands of farm workers were made jobless during the so-called land reform programme while industry is currently operating 36% capacity and dropping. The engineering industry which was largely dependent on the agricultural industry was decimated when the commercial agricultural sector collapsed. The huge levels of imports running into billions of US $ reflects that the local industry is unable to produce goods for the local market. The main cities and towns are inundated with well educated and skilled vendors scrambling for a living as they cannot find employment. For those of us who have lived through this nightmare for the last 14 years there can be little doubt that the figures in the 80’s and 90’s % are closer to the truth. If ZPF in it’s election manifesto came in at 60% and the economy has deteriorated since how can 10.7% unemployment be correct? Not to mention the millions who left for the diaspora.

It would be more useful in Zimbabwe to classify formal and non-formal employment, under-employment and forced entrepreneurship. To try and use Western definitions within the Zimbabwean context would be akin to comparing apples and bananas. The understanding of the situation, within Zimbabweans themselves, is different.

Some are happy being informally employed, thus cannot be classified as “unemployed”. At the end of the day, perhaps the issue is to determine those who are completely without anything to do as the unemployed.

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